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The memories that O'Brien has asserted she possesses were retrieved through the use of hypnosis. The specific program which she claimed was responsible for her dissociative identity disorder, Project Monarch, is not mentioned in reviews of MKULTRA, its alleged parent program. Because most MKULTRA records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of then CIA Director Richard Helms, it has been difficult, if not impossible, for investigators to gain a complete understanding of the more than 150 individually funded research sub-projects sponsored by MKULTRA and related CIA programs.[7][8]

O'Brien also states that she has a recollection of child abuse — of her and her daughter — by international pedophile rings, drug barons and satanists, as part of a sex slave aspect to her "trauma based mind control programming." Individuals from United States, Canadian, Mexican and Saudi Arabian government officials to stars of the Country and Western music scene are among those she accuses of these crimes. According to scholar Michael Barkun, investigations into the story produced no credible evidence and numerous inconsistencies.[5]

O'Brien says she was recruited against her will by the CIA and her abusive father as a child, through a network of child pornographers he was involved with, and forced to participate in a mind control program named Project Monarch, which is said to be a subsection of Project MKULTRA and Project ARTICHOKE.[2][3][4][5]

O'Brien says that she has developed dissociative identity disorder (previously called multiple personality disorder) and that she has no memory of some of her activities. She also says that she has a photographic recall of the events that she suffered whilst her alternate personalities were in control.[6]

Swedish scholar Mattias Gardell states that O'Brien's assertions are almost entirely unsupported by any evidence outside her testimony or the similarly unverified testimony of others.[9] Michael Barkun states that "scholarly and journalistic treatments of MK-ULTRA make no mention of a Project Monarch".[5]

Her accounts have entered the conspiracy culture, linking assertions of satanic ritual abuse with MKUltra.[10]Mark Dice was skeptical of her assertions, but also commented, "there are very real victims of such programs" and "it is possible that a victim would write a book about them and have nobody believe her."[11]